Streaming Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a playthrough. However, although many players have attempted to complete the game using only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he played the game using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with no energy. A single stick run, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest tool in the entire world. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character gains full stamina and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

That creates new problems, though. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the title that refuses to open certain locations. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he wields, presumably to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eradicates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would find these means reason to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban one fan from his live stream, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last several long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible stick is still only a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last attack, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.